Discussion: Garmin Outage

Does anyone know why Garmin Connect has been down for over 24 hours?

https://www.androidcentral.com/garmin-connect-suff...

alleged ransomware attack.

Change your passwords people!!

They've taken their website offline for a couple of days to fix it.

I like how one of the workarounds is to 'plug your Garmin into your computer'. Yeah well I haven't been able to do that for many years thanks to the worthless Ant stick that suffers its own outages every time Garmin decides to update GC.

Right, so for those of you with newer Garmins that don't need the Ant stick to download, you can still get your data files without Garmin Connect:

https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2020/07/how-to-upload-...

Once you know where to look for your .fit files you can use the "upload files" option in AP's add-training or batch-entry form.

I noticed that Chrome/windows doesn't let me select multiple files for batch uploading from my watch (seems to affect music variants), but if I copy the files to the PC first then it's all good.

I think "ransomware attack" more likely means that the hackers are threatening to trash Garmin's databases than that they have access to things like passwords. And I would assume (hope?) that Garmin has adequate backups so that they once they do whatever they need to do to sterilize or replace the equipment, they can do a restore. Definitely a pain, and an expense for them.

But even if the hackers did get my password, what are they gonna do? Upload training sessions to my account that I didn't really do?

But even if the hackers did get my password, what are they gonna do?

Use that email and password on other, more interesting, sites - since a lot of people are silly and re-use passwords across multiple sites including their own email accounts and online banking.

It appears my 910XT won't even send its fit files to my computer without Garmin Connect functioning. Latest fit file in that folder is from before the website went down. Anyone know any workarounds?

since a lot of people are silly

And they'll presumably change all of their passwords to the same matching combination.
(I just checked my list, they might be able to pay my highway tolls for me.)

Alex, do you connect your 910XT to your computer with a USB cable to charge it? If so, the 910XT should be recognized as an external drive that you can navigate to find your FIT files.

bbroke: does the same go for gpx files?

The 910 does charge by USB but doesn't sync over USB or mount as an external drive. It can only sync by the Ant stick. And if that isn't working right now I haven't seen any workarounds.

Is it possible that the outage is affecting watches' ability to connect to satellites?

My watch has been taking an unusual amount of time to connect to satellites and none of the points were accurate in my O-Range interval session today.

Maybe, though I would think that once you are finally locked on you should be good.

Gord, it might be different for other models, but with my ForeRunner 235, I can only see FIT files (...\GARMIN\ACTIVITY\*.FIT). But there are online tools to convert FIT to GPX, if you need that format.

Alex / Ken, bummer -- I didn't realize the other models were different in that way.

One of the online tools to convert to .gpx is Attackpoint. Once you’ve added the.fit file to your training activity, open the activity and one of the options is to download a .gpx file.

*.fit files are garmins data format - thats what they store data in on the watch - but easily converted to many other formats such as gpx with common tools. Plus attackpoint uploads fit files natively so if you're uploading to AP, just use the fit file - no gpx required. And you can download the gpx as Charlie says, but i'm not sure if that's a feature available to all or just supporting attack-pointers as a extra feature.

Right, ANT stick only, and it doesn’t appear to be storing files locally. Never was a good system...

My 405CX appears to store .tcx files on my laptop, but Garmin Express refuses to do anything if it can't connect to the servers, so the ANT+ transfer hasn't happened since the July 22.

And, surprise to me, it appears that the .tcx file has altitude in it. I'll need to see how well that works when I'm hang gliding.

It definitely is possible to transfer to a local folder from ANT-only devices on linux, see https://github.com/Tigge/antfs-cli (unfortunately, this doesn't support Windows, not sure about Mac)

It's possible some of you might be able to find your activities in the folder specified in this support article: https://support.garmin.com/en-US/?faq=GiLICKFtvE1n... - that's if they've synced to the computer but have yet to make it to Garmin Connect for obvious reasons.

The FIT_TYPE_4 folder mentioned in the article appears to be empty on my computer.

With my 910XT, files are definitely not getting transferred into the FIT folder, even though the watch shows a progress bar indicating they are being transferred. (Before the Garmin web site problem, the .fit files made it into that folder just fine.)

Have you tried disconnecting network (like airplane mode)? Maybe it behaves differently.when server/network isn't available at all.

Same here, no current FIT files, although the FIT file header claims it has been modified currently.. (ie shows a 7/25 modified date, but latest file is 7/21).

Me too tRicky. My usual method Garmin Express refuses to work with or without being connected to the internet. The watch a FR235 appears as a USB device but none of the files appears to have anything in it, though there are lots of runs on the watch.

My Garmin just keeps attempting to synch over and over without success anywhere. The empty FIT file hasn't been updated since 2019.

Can you feel yourself getting less fit tRicky ?

My 235 has been getting frantic just after 10pm for about 20 minutes for the last week.

My 235, connected to computer by USB has fit files in the directory D:\GARMIN\ACTIVITY
These can be uploaded directly to Attackpoint (or Strava if that is what you are into). I checked the driver for the "USB drive" and it is just a standard Microsoft driver from 2006, so this access shouldn't require anything too specialized.

Garmin Express seems to be running in the background, but when I open it up, it reports "Report Error Sorry, we're having a problem communicating with our servers."

just after 10pm

That would be midday GMT. They're off having lunch so the servers are playing up without human supervision.

Hopefully not long to wait

https://support.strava.com/hc/en-us/articles/36004...

IT WORKS!!!! IT'S ALIVE!!!!!

Works for me anyway. Apparently not so well for other people.

Yeah, Garmin Connect has started pushing data files to Attackpoint again, but it might take a few days for them to catch up.

It did mine in two lots but caught up now.

I still can't download my activities from Garmin via AP. After I log in through AP, there are no files shown. When I go to Garmin Connect, they are there, Any suggestions?

This Outage was an Outrage...Millennials are at it again!

Is your AP subscription up to date? That was the issue last time mine didn't synch to AP.

Evan, you will need to setup the automatic Garmin sync. The other way is no longer allowed.

Latest fallout from hack: watch gets locked up during save or discard. Also doesn’t show distance during run. Garmin website has fix. Have to sync 3 times without letting display time-out.

Weird, do you have a link for that fix?

Here is the link to that: https://support.garmin.com/en-US/?faq=9v3LMbxI8V8W...

Went to look for it since I want to use my watch tomorrow...